OVER the next few weeks, two ships carrying a secret cargo of dangerous, nuclear weapons-usable plutonium fuel will leave ports in Britain and France and sail around the globe to Japan. On board will be fuel containing more plutonium than in the entire Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons programmes.(1)

The two British flagged vessels, the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, will leave Barrow in Britain and Cherbourg in France carrying the first commercial shipment to Japan of mixed-oxide (MOX) reactor fuel, made from plutonium and uranium. An estimated 446 kilograms of plutonium is contained in the 40 nuclear fuel elements – enough fissile material to construct 60 nuclear bombs. T

The first plant to use MOX is scheduled to be Fukushima 1, plant. The date has been set to August 22nd, 2010.

To answer you:They used dismantled nuclear weapons, notably start 1 and 2, in order to extract the plutonium, or MOX, the very fuel used in the Fukushima power plant. Now, amid protests and warnings, they went on. Now, they cannot stop the nuclear fusion which has begun in the core of the plant, the heat is getting stronger and stronger inside, with no water to cool it. If they do not succeed, no one knows the outcome.